[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Transfiguration of the Soul, gen, PG-13, 3/4

[lomonaaeren]

Part Two.

Part One.

Title: The Transfiguration of the Soul (3/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Mentions of Ron/Hermione, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Sorted into Slytherin), present tense, angst, violence, bullying, torture, canonical child abuse, minor character death, minor character suicide, Dark Harry.
Wordcount: This part 7900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry is Sorted into Slytherin, and discovers that most of his yearmates seem to think he has some grand plan. Harry, fighting as hard as he can to hang on to his Gryffindor friends and his godfather, decides that if people like Draco Malfoy think he has a plan, then he’ll take advantage of that.
Author’s Notes: This is a side-story/Harry POV of my story “A Plan of Deepest Subtlety and Cunning.” Either can be read first. This should have four parts, to be posted over the next four days.

Thanks again for all the reviews!

Part Three

“I wanted to speak to you about something, Harry, my boy.”

“Yes, Headmaster?” Harry always acts respectful when he’s in Dumbledore’s office, and frequently surprised. He doesn’t want to give Dumbledore any reason to suspect that he knows most of the conversations Dumbledore has with Snape and other people up here. And he does relish the obscure knowledge and spells that Dumbledore teaches him, even if most of those spells are prank jinxes and the like.

Harry isn’t going to disdain any magic that might be useful. Maybe someday, a spell that rubs soap in his enemy’s eyes will make the difference between life and death.

Dumbledore smiles at him over the cup of tea he holds. Harry always accepts tea, but only to warm his hands. He isn’t drinking it when he has no way to be sure that it’s safe. “I notice that you’ve been spending more time with Miss Parkinson lately.”

Harry nods. “Yes, sir.” It’s surprisingly easy to relate to Pansy. She’s not as smart as Hermione or as open-hearted as Ron, but she has a cutting suspicion of other people that Harry finds likeable. And she’s been content with giving him such interesting books for relatively simple secrets.

“Do you think that wise, Harry?”

Harry ignores the use of his first name. It’s sort of useful, a gauge on how silly and child-like Dumbledore thinks he is. “Why wouldn’t it be, sir?”

“I simply wonder if the friendship of young Slytherins is something you should seek out. Some of them are fine, I’m certain.” Dumbledore raises his hand as if to forestall a protest that Harry hasn’t opened his mouth to make. “But others are…well, children of Death Eaters.”

As it happens, Pansy’s father isn’t a Death Eater, simply intensely practical. But Harry knows exactly what Dumbledore is trying to nudge him towards. The snakes have reported on the Headmaster’s investigations of the diary and his murmurings to himself.

Several of them had the word “Horcrux” in them. Dumbledore probably suspects what Harry used to be and thinks he’ll have to keep him under his thumb.

“I don’t think Pansy’s father is a Death Eater, sir,” Harry says, doing his best to radiate naïve and charming confusion.

Dumbledore’s smile turns condescending. “But even so, he could have influenced her undesirably, and she might influence you.”

“To do what, sir?”

“To take actions that might set you on a Dark path.”

That might be Dumbledore’s most exasperating habit, this pseudo-cryptic wisdom that means Harry can’t respond as openly as he likes. He doesn’t want to sound too smart or too independent.

But he can play dumb.

“Oh, no, sir,” Harry says, his eyes wide. “Pansy and I talk a lot about homework together. Is the homework Dark?” He makes sure to sit up and stare at Dumbledore with his eyes wide and his body thrumming as if with nervous tension.

Dumbledore sighs and backs down. “Of course not, Harry. Forgive an old man’s worry.”

You probably think I’m like Tom Riddle, don’t you? Speaker to snakes—or you think I’ve given that up now—and Sorted into Slytherin and an orphan and someone you don’t understand.

Harry just smiles at him, and takes a fake sip of his tea.

*

“Could you stay after class, please, Mr. Potter?”

Harry turns around his with his polite blank face, the one he wears around most professors other than Snape and Dumbledore. With Dumbledore, Harry has to feign real enthusiasm, and with Snape, he lets his hatred out because they both know there’s no point in pretending.

But Professor Remus Lupin is an odd sort. He talks to Harry as if they were old friends and has offered him extra tutoring, which Harry’s refused because he’s already getting that from Dumbledore and Lupin hasn’t offered it to anyone else. That makes Harry worry that this is yet another Voldemort-possessed imposter.

Now, though, Lupin stands in front of the door as though he thinks Harry would hesitate to blast past him to get out. It’s true that Harry would prefer to save the blasting for Snape, Voldemort, and certain bullies, though. He looks at Lupin and asks, “Yes, sir?”

“I hoped that you would come and speak to me before this if you needed extra help.” Lupin’s voice is soft and chiding.

“Was there something wrong with my last essay, sir?”

“One of your classmates reported your reaction to Dementors on the train earlier this year.” Harry just feels glad that it happened in front of a compartment of younger Slytherins he’s already impressed and essentially forced into keeping quiet, or it could have spread a lot further. “I wanted to let you know that you can depend on me to help you, protect you. But you haven’t, even though there are Dementors stationed all around the school.”

Harry raises his eyebrows. “I haven’t come into close enough contact with Dementors again to need help, sir. But thank you for thinking of me.”

It wasn’t pleasant to relive the moment when the basilisk came out of Slytherin’s statue, but that doesn’t matter. There are other, more important things to think about.

Lupin’s gaze turns pleading. “You’re sure you don’t need extra help? Even with—Sirius Black after you?”

“I’ve been studying hard, sir.” And since Lupin undoubtedly wouldn’t approve of the Dark Arts books that Pansy is lending him, Harry is going to keep it at that.

Lupin stares at him. Harry stares back. Lupin finally utters a long, soft sigh, and moves aside while unlocking the door.

Harry’s skin crawls. He didn’t realize the door was locked like that. He nods to Lupin again and moves past him with long strides.

Now to find the person who told Lupin about his reaction to Dementors, and persuade them to keep their mouth shut.

*

“I’m not letting you go anywhere alone with Gryffindors, Potter. You know what happened the last time.”

Pansy says that, and follows him and Ron and Hermione out onto the grounds as they hide and listen to the debate over Buckbeak’s future. And that begins one of the longest and strangest evenings of Harry’s life.

A black dog comes out of nowhere and lunges for Ron’s rat, who he’s been carrying around for days now as if he thinks that that rat is what Black wanted to take when he tried to break into Gryffindor Tower. Ron shouts and shoves at the dog, which only presses him flat and growls in his face.

Harry is drawing his wand when Scabbers leaps out of Ron’s pocket and runs for it. The black dog lunges after him and grabs the rat’s tail in his teeth. He then whirls around as if he means to run.

But Ron grabs him, and actually tries to wrestle Scabbers out of his teeth. Harry isn’t sure if it’s Ron who won’t let go of the dog or the dog who decides that he might as well take both an annoying kid and an annoying rat, but Ron gets dragged along. Harry and Pansy and Hermione run after them, trying to stay as quiet as possible so as not to alert the Minister and executioner and Malfoy’s father in Hagrid’s hut.

By the time they get through the extremely strange tunnel under the Whomping Willow, and realize they’re in the Shrieking Shack, Ron’s leg is broken and the dog has transformed into a man.

Hermione is panting hard at Harry’s side. Pansy is silent, her eyes darting about as if trying to understand how they came to be in this situation. Ron has fainted from the pain.

Harry only feels a hard, fatal joy.

“You’re Sirius Black,” he says to the man standing in front of him, whose wild, shaggy-haired face Harry has seen peering from posters and papers for months now.

“Yes,” the man says hoarsely. “Your godfather.” Harry starts to speak, but Black turns and gives the rat a sharp shake. “And this is Peter Pettigrew.”

It’s such a bizarre story that Harry gives him a chance to speak. And then more footsteps pound up the tunnel, and Lupin arrives, out of breath.

Lupin and Black exchange a few hard, terse words that make Harry realize Lupin was a friend of his parents, too. Was that the reason he was disappointed that Harry didn’t request extra tutoring? Well, Harry will probably never know, since Lupin never actually spat the words out.

Lupin seems to think Black is trustworthy. He gives him his wand, which makes Pansy shuffle backwards and Hermione let out a squeak of alarm. Harry just keeps watching. He’s confident that if Black tries to curse him, he can defend himself.

Instead, Black aims the wand at the rat and mutters something. And the rat turns into a pallid, sniveling man, trying to hide behind brown hair that’s nearly as shaggy as Black’s own.

Harry blinks. Then he blinks again. Part of him doesn’t want to give up his hatred against Black, someone who’s within his reach in the way that Voldemort isn’t.

But on the other hand, he still has a real traitor he can curse and hate. And Pettigrew doesn’t even have an excuse.

“Yes, I betrayed James and Lily,” the man squeaks, his hands pedaling in the air like paws. “I had to! You don’t know what the Dark Lord is like! There’s no way that anyone can stand up to him, his power is—”

“I stood up to him,” Harry interrupts. “My first year, when he possessed our Defense professor and tried to steal the Philosopher’s Stone. I was eleven. You’re a bloody adult, Pettigrew.”

The former rat stares at him with wide eyes, and then manages a smile. “Little Harry. You were always so cute when you were younger—”

“Before you betrayed my parents and condemned me to a living hell with Muggles, you mean?” Harry demands.

“What do the Muggles do to you?” Black asks in a low voice.

Harry glances at him and decides that the people here are unlikely to betray him. Or, if they do, he’ll know the source of the leak. “They stick me in a cupboard under the stairs. It was my bedroom until I came to Hogwarts, and since then, they mainly use it as a punishment. And they make me do chores, swing frying pans at me, let my cousin beat me up—”

Black growls like the dog Animagus he apparently is. “I’ll kill them.”

For a moment, Harry’s world seems to stop. It’s the first time that an adult has ever sounded as if they really would fight for him, instead of looking the other way or hating him for no reason or dispensing cryptic advice.

Black cares so much about Harry that he wants to murder people he’s never met, instead of just the man who betrayed Harry’s parents.

Harry is intensely flattered.

Then, of course, Hermione and Lupin jump in, both scolding Black and saying he can’t do that. Harry just watches him. Black catches his eye and winks at him, a little gleam of madness in his face that Harry understands and appreciates.

Black might say all the right things in the moment to placate Hermione and Lupin, but he’ll do what he promised sooner or later.

Pansy does say, when Black starts to aim his borrowed wand at Pettigrew, “Don’t you need him to prove your innocence? I know he’s the reason you spent twelve years in prison, but they’ll just send you back there for his murder if he’s not alive.”

“Yes,” Harry says quietly. “She’s right, Sirius. I want you free so I can live with you. I want to know you as my godfather the way I always should have.”

Sirius smiles at him. Then he gives Pansy a dubious glance. “I suppose. But how am I supposed to trust the Ministry that imprisoned me without a trial?”

“Take him back to the castle,” Pansy suggests. “You can trust Professor Dumbledore to try and see justice done, can’t you?”

Harry stares at her. Pansy raises her eyebrows at him, and mouths, Gryffindor.

Yes, well, Gryffindors would have more of a reason to trust Dumbledore. Harry and Pansy exchange what could possibly be called a Slytherin glance, and go to work to persuade Sirius to imprison Pettigrew and take him back to Dumbledore.

They manage to arrange themselves at last, with Pettigrew bound and walking between Black and Lupin, Ron floating on a stretcher with his broken leg placed gently in restraints, and Pansy and Hermione taking the rearguard. Harry finds himself walking beside Black—or Sirius, as he prefers to be called. And Harry will use that name if he wants.

He’ll do just about anything for Sirius, the first adult he can remember giving a damn about him since his parents died.

They come out from under the tree, and the full moon shines above them. And Lupin tilts his head back and growls, and Harry stares at him, wondering if Lupin is a dog Animagus, too, and why he would choose this time of all times to transform.

Then he sees the light of the full moon striking Lupin, and remembers the days earlier in the year when Lupin would seem to get randomly sick and be out of class, and the essay that Snape assigned them on werewolves.

“Harry!” Sirius shouts.

Hermione shouts, too, and runs forwards, trying to get between him and Lupin. Pettigrew twists at the same moment, transforming into a rat. Sirius lunges for him, shouting in fury, and grabs Hermione out of the way and throws her aside. Harry hears her scream as she lands, and sees her arm hanging limply.

He and Pansy draw their wands in an instant, and get between Hermione and Ron and the werewolf. Pettigrew scrambles, in rat form, into the trees. Harry watches him go with an intense frustration, but surviving a werewolf has to be the priority right now.

Sirius has turned into dog form, and stands between Harry and the twisted creature that Lupin has become. Lupin lunges forwards with a snarl, and Sirius leaps and tumbles and gets out of the way, then snaps at Lupin’s tail and runs into the Forbidden Forest. Lupin follows him with a loud growl.

Harry clenches his wand, but Hermione is starting to cry with pain, and the stretcher has collapsed to the ground without Sirius and Lupin’s magic to lift it. Pansy is also trembling. Harry knows she would try to be strong if he needed her to be, but he has a responsibility to his friends.

With a heavy heart, Harry sets the stretcher floating again and casts a spell to immobilize Hermione’s broken arm.

*

“I am afraid that the Aurors who came with the Minister to witness Buckbeak’s execution found both Professor Lupin and Mr. Black, and have confined Mr. Black to a room on the third floor. They intend to bring a Dementor to Kiss him.”

Dumbledore waltzes into the hospital wing with those words. Harry looks up from the stool he’s sitting on between Ron and Hermione’s beds, and then starts to his feet as the import of the words hits him.

“But they can’t! He’s innocent! We told you!”

Dumbledore sighs. “I did try to tell Cornelius that, Harry, but I’m afraid he’s not listening. He seems too intently focused on carrying out the sentence on Mr. Black for the accolades it will bring him.”

Harry turns, ready to leave the hospital wing and go curse the Minister himself. He’s not going to let Sirius be taken from him, especially so soon after finding him.

Pansy, who’s been lingering quietly in the corner of the hospital wing behind Hermione’s bed, lays a hand on his arm. Harry glances up and sees Dumbledore holding out something small and shining golden.

“Perhaps Miss Granger’s Time-Turner will help?” Dumbledore asks softly.

“Granger’s what?” Pansy is the one who asks, but Harry glances back at Hermione and remembers how tired she seemed and how many times she seemed to be in a place that she couldn’t possibly been, and shakes his head a little. He wishes she’d told him, but considering the amount of secrets he’s kept from her, he can’t really blame her.

“Professor McGonagall allowed Miss Granger to have it to take the greatest number of classes possible,” Dumbledore is explaining in a mild voice, as if the Minister for Magic isn’t on his way to Sirius’s cell with a Dementor right now. “It only goes back an hour, and you will have to be very careful not to change anything you know to be true, and to stay out of sight of your past selves. But I am certain that you will manage to save the deserving.”

The way he stresses those words, staring into Harry’s eyes, tells Harry that he already has a plan. And when Harry thinks about it, he can only see one thing that would work.

He’s happy to let Dumbledore claim the credit for that plan if he wants. Harry hardly cares about credit at the moment. He reaches out and snatches the Time-Turner from Dumbledore’s hand. The man’s lips twitch a little, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, Pansy,” Harry says.

Dumbledore catches his breath. “Are you sure, Mr. Potter? I thought you would take Mr. Weasley or Miss Granger with you. Miss Granger would be the better choice, since she knows how to work the Time-Turner.”

Harry rakes him with a glance that seems to surprise Dumbledore. Harry suspects his true nature is bubbling too close to the surface of his soul right now. But if he can save Sirius, the one adult who promised to try and take care of him, Harry doesn’t give a shit.

“Hermione has a broken arm, and Ron has a broken leg,” Harry says, his voice clipped. “Pansy can help me best.”

Pansy seems to stand taller and suck in a deep breath. She can do that if she wants. Harry has little concept of what’s going through her head right now, except that she’s probably proud to be trusted.

“Turn it this way to go back an hour,” Dumbledore says, and smiles at him. “Do allow me to get outside the hospital wing first, as I should not see you disappear.”

Harry nods shortly, straining his ears for the sound of Dementors. He can’t hear them, and he’s not even sure they make a noise as they glide along, but he’s had enough of delaying. He barely waits for the door to fall shut behind Dumbledore before he turns to Pansy and holds the chain out. They should probably both put their heads through it so they don’t get lost.

Pansy steps forwards, her eyes shining, and accepts the chain. Harry wishes that he had the Invisibility Cloak with him, so they could go disguised, but that would prompt questions from Pansy that he doesn’t really want to answer.

He twists the Time-Turner the way Dumbledore showed him.

*

And from there, it’s simple enough. They duck out of the hospital wing when Madam Pomfrey goes into her office and run from tree to tree on their way to the place behind Hagrid’s house where the hippogriff, Buckbeak, is tethered. Harry remembers both Hagrid’s lesson from earlier in the year and how Malfoy got injured by this very hippogriff when he insulted him, and he approaches with a low bow.

(Personally, Malfoy getting injured is one of the most hilarious things that Harry’s ever seen at Hogwarts, but it’s for the best that it serves as a lesson for him now).

“Wait, you’re going to take the hippogriff?” Pansy’s voice is a little high. “But we know he was executed!”

“We don’t know that at all,” Harry says in a soft voice, his eyes locked on Buckbeak’s as he bows. “We didn’t see it happen.”

“We heard the axe—”

“We heard it fall, and hit something. We don’t know what. And Macnair was swearing after that, remember? Not laughing the way he probably would have after a successful execution.” Harry bows deeper as Buckbeak just stares at him, wings moving softly back and forth. “Beautiful one. May we ride you to freedom? We want to rescue you, and a man who hasn’t done anything wrong.”

He can practically feel Pansy choking back a protest, but he ignores her. After witnessing Malfoy’s “accident,” Pansy knows very well that hippogriffs can understand English.

Buckbeak waits another nerve-wracking moment, then bows back to them. Harry sighs and walks forwards, untethering Buckbeak as quietly as he can. He knows that he should be out of sight to his past self, but he’s not sure about the windows of Hagrid’s hut, and he’s glad when he finally swings up on Buckbeak’s back.

“Come on, Pansy.” He holds out his hand.

“He won’t hurt me?”

Pansy’s voice is tiny, but she comes forwards without waiting for reassurance, and Harry feels a glow of satisfaction. She trusts him enough to risk getting scratched the way Malfoy was. Yes, he thinks he can trust her.

“No, because I approached him right.” Harry strokes Buckbeak’s neck. “Besides, I know that he doesn’t want to die.”

Buckbeak gives a shiver of his wings, but doesn’t object. Harry pulls Pansy up behind him, and makes sure that she’s holding onto his waist. Then he whispers to Buckbeak, “Move a little further away, and then take flight. They might see the movement from inside the hut otherwise.”

Buckbeak bobs his head in what’s at least a good imitation of a nod if not a genuine one, and moves forwards at a jolting trot, his hind hooves working oddly with his taloned forefeet. Then he jumps into the air, and they’re rising with some of the same lightness and rightness that Harry feels on a broom.

They land under a tree and hide in the Forbidden Forest for a while, until, by Pansy’s careful Tempus Charm, the Minister will be heading to the castle with the Dementors. Then Buckbeak rises again at another direction from Harry and flies towards the castle.

Dumbledore neglected to tell them which room on the third floor Sirius is being held in, but it turns out to be obvious, given the thick shutters that are barred across the window and the glowing warding spells on it. Harry draws his wand. Behind him, Pansy whispers, “I don’t think I know how to handle those spells.”

“Don’t worry, I do,” Harry says, and he touches his wand to the first warding spells. They buzz warningly at him, but Harry doesn’t care. He knows what to do because of the books from Pansy’s father’s library. “Frangere!”

The General Breaking Hex hammers into the wards on the shutters, and two of them snap with a cascade of sparks. Another one resists, but Harry repeats the spell, and it parts like a rope strained with too much weight. Harry reaches out and unhooks the latch on the shutters, ignoring Pansy’s intake of breath as Harry balances himself on the edge of Buckbeak’s back. Then again, compared to a Quidditch broom, this is nothing.

The shutters open easily, and Sirius’s haggard face appears. Harry is a little amazed to see that they’ve left him unbound, but of course, they took any wand he had away before they put him in here. They probably thought there was no reason to restrain him with more than the shutters and Locking Charms on the door.

“Harry?” Sirius breathes, sounding dazed. “What did you—how did you—”

Harry smiles at him. “This hippogriff was going to be executed for attacking a student whose father is on the Board of Governors. Thought we could liberate him and you at the same time.”

Sirius nods, still staring at him. “You—Remus didn’t come back and harm any of you, did he? They didn’t tell me.”

“He didn’t,” Pansy says flatly. “No thanks to him being a werewolf.”

Sirius ignores her, staying focused absolutely on Harry. Harry drinks that in. Someone who puts him first is—really nice.

“No, he didn’t,” Harry says. “But they’re going to bring Dementors to Kiss you, so you’ve got to get out of here.” He starts to swing off Buckbeak’s back.

“Wait,” Pansy says suddenly. “They can’t come in the door and find us here, Harry. We’ll have to all three fly back to the infirmary window, and then Black can take Buckbeak on from there.”

Harry feels his face burn at not realizing something so simple, and he nods at Pansy. He does touch Buckbeak on the neck, though, and ask, “Do you think you can handle three passengers, boy?”

Buckbeak gives a contemptuous flutter of his wings. Sirius laughs, sounding relieved. “Always good to ask, but most hippogriffs are pretty strong. This looks like one.”

Buckbeak turns his head to brush Sirius with a slight, approving glance.

Sirius sits in between Harry and Pansy for the short flight back to the hospital wing window, and Harry soaks in as much as he can of the warmth of his godfather’s arms and tight hug, the first time he can remember an adult giving him one. When Sirius tells him that he wishes they could live together, it’s only icing on the cake.

And then they’re climbing in the infirmary window, and Sirius and Buckbeak are soaring away. Harry watches him go, and knows that he looks vulnerable in that moment, with tears in the corners of his eyes. Pansy mercifully stands silent and says nothing.

Finally, Harry turns to her and breathes, “You can’t tell anyone about this, Pansy.”

“You think they’d believe me?” Pansy’s eyes are very wide.

“You still can’t.”

And Pansy nods. Her eyes still have some of the same shine that they did earlier. Maybe she’s imagining the power she can have over other Slytherins by dropping hints about the whole thing, by implying that she and Harry share secrets they can’t share.

Harry can’t be bothered by that right now. He looks back at the dot in the sky that’s the one adult who cares about him. The one who couldn’t stay, but who exists.

And he smiles.

*

As it turns out, a murderous godfather makes a great tool to terrorize the Dursleys into leaving him alone with.

And when a not-at-all-mysterious broom-shaped package arrives for his birthday, carried by tropical parrots, that turns out to be the brand-new Firebolt broom, that’s pretty great, too.

*

“Harry Potter.”

Dumbledore makes that announcement, and Harry feels his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach.

So far, fourth year has actually been nice, minus the lack of Quidditch. Lupin got sacked for being a werewolf, and the new Defense professor, Moody, is teaching them interesting things, like the Unforgivable Curses. No one has tried to threaten Harry’s life in the corridors, and the snakes bring him news, so that he’s been able to evade several ambushes by Gryffindors, including one where he led them right into the rest of the Slytherin Quidditch team. Sirius writes regularly.

But of course it couldn’t last. Of course his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire.

Harry gets up and walks into the little room off the Great Hall that the rest of the “Champions” have gone into.

It rapidly becomes clear that no one is going to believe him. Harry watches the adults in silence, and burns with frozen fury. None of the other Champions are happy, either, although Cedric Diggory looks a little sorry for him.

No choice. He has to compete. The Goblet has gone out, and it won’t light again until the beginning of the next Tournament. Or whenever they decide to use it to trap someone else helpless and unwilling into this kind of shit, Harry reckons.

Harry steps out of the little room committed to survival, and also to warding his bedroom more deeply. He’s sure that Slytherin won’t like it that he supposedly put his name in the Goblet and got caught as a “cheater.” Snape is already glaring at him.

*

He steps into the common room, and straight into the middle of a party.

“Welcome, fellow serpents, the hero of the hour!” Malfoy crows, standing up in the middle of a circle of chairs, his eyes bright and gleeful.

There’s a loud cheer, and then several seventh-years start the letters on the banners strung on the wall moving, and one of the sixth-years begins distributing Firewhisky. Harry stares around with dazed eyes. The banners say, HARRY POTTER, SLYTHERIN CHAMPION.

He’s not stupid enough to think this is anything other than self-serving, but it’s still a very different reaction than he thought he’d get. Harry frowns, shakes his head, and drags Malfoy over to a corner as soon as he can for a private chat. (It comes after a lot of handshakes and winks and fairly serious mentions of the Galleons they’ve bet on Harry).

“What the hell, Malfoy?” Harry whispers, after lifting a privacy charm. That’s just second nature for any conversation he has in the Slytherin common room now. “Why isn’t everyone upset that I got caught?”

“They didn’t catch you when it was important, did they?” Malfoy winks at him the way some of the others have, but he sighs and lets the smile fade when Harry just stares at him. “It’s bloody impressive that you got past that Age Line, and in a way that meant they couldn’t disqualify you. I suppose you don’t want to tell me how you did it?”

Harry is a lot of things, but not stupid enough to protest his innocence. Not right now. He raises his eyebrows. “Why would I do that when we aren’t even on a first-name basis, Malfoy?”

“We need to remedy that.” Malfoy sighs again. “Call me Draco, please. I know I’ve done a lot of stupid shit, but I hope to make up for it. I don’t want to be on the bad side of the most powerful wizard in our year.”

And he holds out his hand like he did on the train, a lifetime ago.

Harry swallows, and reaches out to shake it. He knows that he’s making another commitment, one that will be harder to change or take back, but Malfoy—Draco—can be a powerful ally when he wants to, and hopefully he’ll make fewer stupid moves like antagonizing a hippogriff when he has Harry around to monitor him.

“It’s Harry, then.”

Draco’s smile breaks across his face like a wave. “And am I still the wrong sort?”

Harry gives him a critical stare. “I’m thinking about that.”

Draco’s smile is brilliant as he cants his head to the side. “Fair enough.”

And Draco just looks so thrilled to finally be accepted into the inner circle or whatever-the-hell-it-is that Slytherins call it among themselves that Harry smiles back.

*

The Tasks are hard, but they’re a lot easier than they would have been otherwise, because of Sirius.

Sirius owls him a communication mirror, and they start speaking through that just about every evening, with Harry’s curtains drawn around the bed and the strongest warding spells he knows layered on top of that. Seeing Sirius’s face relaxes Harry, and he learns a lot more about the man who would have been his second father in another world.

Sirius is the one who tells Harry, when he complains about Ron thinking he cheated to get his name in the Goblet, to leave it alone, and predicts that Ron will come back sooner or later. When Harry tells Sirius that Ron feels overshadowed by his older brothers, Sirius snorts and nods.

“I was like that, but with me it was my younger brother,” Sirius says, shaking his head. “Reggie. Regulus, that is. He was everything my parents wanted, calm and obedient and a believer in pureblood politics, and a Slytherin. They always lamented to me that he should have been born first.” Sirius sighs. “He became a Death Eater and died young, poor bastard. I wished afterwards that I would have talked to him, and made him realize it was our parents who were the unreasonable ones. Ron will come around, Harry. Leave him alone for now, and let him.”

Sneaking around under his Invisibility Cloak, Harry learns the First Task is bloody dragons, and hatches the plan to Summon his Firebolt with Sirius. Hermione helps him practice Summoning Charms until Harry’s dreams echo with Accio, and it works. It’s still dangerous, of course, but Harry gets the golden egg away, and evades the dragon, and there’s another back-pounding celebration in the Slytherin common room that night.

Ron does come back and apologize, shame-faced. Harry punches him lightly in the arm, and forgives him. It’s easier than he expected. He took Sirius’s advice and ignored Ron’s sulking. Putting Ron out of his mind means that the betrayal never had the chance to fully hurt him.

It’s a plan Harry thinks he can keep to for future betrayals.

*

The minute Harry holds the golden egg up to the mirror—behind Silencing Charms—and plays it for Sirius, his godfather is shuddering in recognition.

“Mermish,” Sirius mutters. “You need to get to a place where you can play it underwater, see what it says. And get ready for a swim in the lake.”

Harry dedicates one whole week to the Water Bubble Charm, which conjures a bubble of water floating along in mid-air, about twice his size. Deciphering the riddle is pretty easy. The merfolk are going to take something he holds dear and put it under the water, and he’ll have an hour to get it back.

When Harry explains the riddle to Sirius, Sirius looks at him in silence for a long time, and then says, “You’re more afraid of this then I thought you’d be. Why?”

“I can’t swim,” Harry says.

“You and I both know there are magical ways around that.” Sirius is gentle. “Please don’t lie to me, Harry.”

Harry swallows back the pounding pulse of fear in his throat, and whispers, “What if they find some way to take you? And then arrest you when I bring you out of the lake? Or just have you Kissed right on the spot?” He wakes up from nightmares about Dementors now, but not for the reasons that Lupin probably thought.

“Harry. Harry, listen to me.”

Sirius’s voice is kind and low, all the things that Harry once wanted an adult’s voice to be, and he looks reluctantly back at the mirror. Sirius is leaning so close to the glass on his side that almost the only thing Harry can see is his eyes.

“They can’t reach me,” Sirius promises. “They can’t take me. And if they tried, we would fight our way out of there, and we’d run. We’d live on the run, if we had to. It’s not the life I want for you, or I would have invited you along with me when I flew away on Buckbeak, but I’d take that before I’d abandon you again.”

Harry sighs and relaxes as much as he can about something that hasn’t happened yet. “All right. I—but it’s probably going to be a person, right? Not something like my Firebolt.”

Sirius leans back with a smile. “No, I don’t think they would take objects. Not enough drama for the audience, or the Tournament.” He rolls his eyes, and Harry chuckles.

In the end, it’s Ron they take. Harry has the feeling that the Headmaster, or the Tournament judges, or whoever made the decision, probably don’t understand enough about Harry’s friendships with the Slytherins, or think that he’ll value Ron more since their argument. Sirius advises Harry on where to get gillyweed—which Harry uses a snake to steal from Snape’s stores—and how to use it. And Harry dives under the water, and uses some of his crueler combat spells to make the merfolk scatter out of the way, and rescues Ron in plenty of time.

Bringing the girl who turns out to be Delacour’s little sister up, too, was a fleeting impulse, but it turns out to be good news when Delacour tearfully tells him she owes him. Someday, Harry might find an interesting use for that debt.

*

Sirius gives him a general drill on the spells and creatures he might encounter in the hedge maze, but the minute Harry’s hand touches the Tri-Wizard Cup, a few heartbeats before Cedric’s could have reached it, and he feels the jerk behind his navel, Harry knows that nothing Sirius did would have readied him for this.

Harry rolls to his feet in a dusky outdoor space. He can see stone angels and leaning crosses around him, and thinks first, Graveyard, and then Voldemort, because of course no one else would be this bloody dramatic.

The person who hurries towards him, though, his wand out, is Peter Pettigrew.

Harry feels some of that joy he did when he first saw Sirius transform and thought he was the man who’d betrayed Harry’s parents. Only Pettigrew is fully guilty, and fully a Death Eater, and fully deserves it.

Harry explodes the earth at his feet, and, as Pettigrew squeaks in alarm, chases after him, aiming to kill and maim and torture. He doesn’t use the Unforgivables because he’d practiced them in private and only been able to manage a weak Imperius Curse, but there are plenty of others that the books from Pansy’s father gave him, and he’s going to use them all.

As it is, he manages to break Pettigrew’s wand arm and scrape a long strip of skin from his forehead that nearly blinds him before a large snake flings her coils around his legs from behind and trips him.

Pettigrew whimpers as he binds Harry on a gravestone, but then Harry’s attention is taken fully from him by the ugly baby-figure that Pettigrew brings out. Harry curls his lip and ignores the way that Voldemort tries to taunt him. If this is what “the most powerful Dark wizard of our time” has been reduced to, Harry is bloody glad that he knows lots of magic besides the Dark Arts.

Pettigrew ends up taking Harry’s blood—when Harry fights, he has the snake lie on top of him to hold him still—and chopping off his own hand to put in the cauldron, after which he drops Voldemort into it. Harry stares at him in disbelief. He didn’t think Pettigrew was insane, just a coward, but now he has to question that idea.

The creature that rises out of the cauldron doesn’t improve Harry’s opinion of Pettigrew. It’s a monster, with skin as pale as salt, red eyes that blaze like pinpricks of madness, and no nose. Harry can’t lift his hands to touch his own face, but he wants to. What spells are the ones that leave you with no nose, so he can never, ever do them?

Voldemort steps up to Harry and stares down at him. Harry stares back at him, and the fear and the hatred coil together in his belly and swirl.

When Voldemort whispers mockingly that he can touch Harry now and reaches down to caress his skin, Harry spits in his face.

Voldemort tortures him for that. The Cruciatus Curse feels as agonizing in person as it looked when Moody used it on the spider. Harry pants, his head lolling off to the side, as Voldemort calls his Death Eaters and makes a long speech about his immortality.

The Horcruxes.

Harry is immediately sure that’s what Voldemort’s talking about. And from the way he’s talking, he probably made more than just the one, the diary. And more than just the one that used to be in Harry.

Harry clutches the realization to himself that Voldemort is less immortal than he thinks. Harry will die here, but Dumbledore at least knows what the diary is, and probably can hunt down the others. Voldemort will still die in the end.

But then Voldemort calls the snake, Nagini, back from lying on top of Harry, and unties Harry and gives him back his wand.

Harry can’t believe his luck. He stands there with his wand held loosely in his hand and stares at Voldemort with all the hatred he can muster, because he has to make it look like he’s going to attack Voldemort and die trying instead of run like hell.

And that means that Voldemort tries to Imperius him into dueling. The curse is harder to shed than Moody’s was, because Voldemort is stronger, but Harry still breaks through it.

“Bow to Death, Harry—”

“I won’t.”

Harry can see more than one pair of eyes widening behind the Death Eaters’ masks at his calm, loud voice, and a few glances exchanged.

But then Voldemort tries to cast the Cruciatus Curse at him again, and the Killing Curse, and Harry leaps and runs and dodges, using the monuments as shelter, heading for the discarded Tri-Wizard Cup. He doesn’t know if it’s a Portkey back, but he at least has to take the chance.

And when he grabs hold of it and sees Voldemort’s wide, furious eyes, he laughs before the whirl of the Portkey takes him back to Hogwarts.

*

Finding out that Moody is really Barty Crouch, Jr., and that the Minister doesn’t want to believe Harry is telling the truth about Voldemort’s return, is a shitty note to end the evening on, but no more than that, compared to what he’s already been through so far.

*

Harry steps into the Slytherin common room again with his hand on his wand. For some reason, Goyle trailed behind him from the hospital wing, having been waiting outside the doors for him. Harry assumes that this is to herd him in the right direction and make sure he won’t run away before the planned ambush in the common room.

It has to be an ambush. Harry knows some of these students have family who came to Voldemort’s call yesterday evening. That means he’s no longer safe here, and he’s probably lost Millicent and Draco.

But instead, he steps into a quiet hush, the only sound the flicker of the fire, despite the number of people gathered on the couches and chairs. Harry glances around warily. Eyes stare back at him.

What? Do they want him to beg? Harry straightens his back. Voldemort couldn’t make him beg, a bunch of kids his own age and a little older or younger aren’t going to do it.

“Are the rumors true?” Draco stands up and takes a step towards him, then stops as if he thinks getting too near Harry would be dangerous. Yes, that’s right, Harry thinks, all his muscles coiling. It would be. “Has the Dark Lord returned?”

“Yes.” Harry lets his voice ring out, anything to conquer the strange silence. “He was in the form of a disfigured baby when he let Peter Pettigrew drop him into a cauldron of potion, and he looks liked a monster when he came out. He had no nose.” Harry smiles at them, mocking. He’ll hold the mocking edge as long as he can. He’ll go down fighting. “He had me tied up, with his snake on top of me, and he used the Cruciatus Curse on me, but he released me from the ropes and tried to use the Imperius to force me to duel him.”

“What?” someone squeaks off to the side. They don’t sound surprised, though. Harry isn’t blind to how many of the people of his House eavesdrop on places like the hospital wing that aren’t magically secured against it. They probably already know.

“Yeah.” Harry shrugs. “I shed it like it was nothing. I’m here, and I’m going to fight until Voldemort is dead. So tell that to Daddy.” He stares straight at Draco as he speaks. He knows he saw a flash of white-blond hair in the graveyard, not even that well-hidden by the mask and hood.

Draco seems to stop beathing for a second. Then he glances around at the watchers, nods, and says, “The Secrecy Spell is upon the common room, invoked before Harry Potter’s entrance, so each word spoken here must be true and cannot be repeated elsewhere. It is to be held sacred.” He draws his wand.

Harry counters instantly with his. He wonders what they think they’ll gain from this. Will they tell him they hate him? He knows that already, at least for most of them. Do they think they can keep him from repeating the story of Voldemort’s return? Harry already told it to Dumbledore, and he’ll certainly spread it around, even if the Minister won’t.

But instead, Draco stares at him and sweeps a low bow, then places his wand on the floor.

“My lord,” he intones.

Some of the Slytherin students stand up from the chairs and couches and back towards the stairs that lead up to the dormitories, indicating they’re not part of this. But others stand and come forwards, most of the ones in fifth and sixth year, a few in seventh—

And everyone in fourth except Daphne Greengrass and Vincent Crabbe, who aren’t there, which is probably a clearer signal of their allegiance than anything else.

Harry watches in stunned silence as their wands rattle to the floor. Some people kneel, but most bow, like Draco does. Millicent does kneel, her eyes wide with delight. Pansy smiles at him, a subtle mocking edge to it, but calls him by the title. Zabini and Nott both bow and speak in the same way Draco does. Tracey Davis is nervous, but she’s there. Goyle comes around in front of him and stares at him with worshipful eyes.

“Why?” Harry asks simply. “You know what kind of trouble you could get into, following me.”

“You’re powerful,” Goyle says simply. “You fought the Dark Lord and got away.”

“I’ve invested too much time in you to give up now,” Pansy says, with a little arch of her eyebrows.

“I’ve been cultivating you as a leader, and you never noticed,” Zabini murmurs, with a sad shake of his head that makes Harry resolve to keep an eye on him.

“I want to be on the winning side,” says Nott.

“I think the Dark Lord’s an idiot,” Tracey blurts, and then claps her hands over her mouth as if she can’t believe she’s said that. Harry no longer doubts the truth spell on the common room.

“I knew from day one that you had a plan,” Draco says, his smile wide and bright. “I want to follow you.”

“You’re my friend,” Millicent says with a little shrug, as if that’s simple.

A chorus of answers rises from the others, mostly a blend of what’s come before, minus the parts about friendship and Voldemort being an idiot. Other people are attracted to power, were convinced by Draco that he had a plan, or want a leader. A few of them are impressed by the fact that he shed the Imperius Curse cast by such a powerful man, and a few seem disgusted by the ritual that returned Voldemort to a body.

But at last they fall silent, and Harry knows he has to make an answer.

There’s only one that makes sense, of course, and only one that he wants to give.

He steps forwards and bends down to retrieve Draco’s wand from the floor, handing it back to him. From the way Draco’s face shines, Harry might have to curb his thoughts about standing too high in the ranks, but that’s all right. It’s still right to give him his wand back first, since he was the first to surrender it.

“I accept,” Harry says quietly.